The invention relates to portable electronic entities comprising, in particular, microcircuit cards, memory cards such as a memory card for storing digital data, for example a “Secure Digital” card or SD card (registered trademark), a USB (universal serial bus) key, a MultiMediaCard, also called MMC (registered trademarks), a SmartMedia card (registered trademark), a multimedia mini-card or a PDA (personal digital assistant), also called organizer. The microcircuit card is, for example, compliant with the ISO 7816 standard. It may, for example, be a secured microcontroller card.
The use of an electronic entity in a determined application context requires the storage, in the electronic entity, of data and/or programs that are likely to be used in this context. This is why a customization step is often used, in particular for portable electronic entities, during which the data specific to the electronic entity is written into a memory of said electronic entity, such as, for example, the identity of the card-holder.
The customization is performed by a customization station which processes the customization data. It should be noted that this customization is not limited to the “electrical” customization of the memory but can, on the contrary, extend to the graphic or physical customization of the portable electronic entity, for example by printing or embossing techniques.
The portable electronic entity includes a rewritable non-volatile memory, for example, an EEPROM (electrically erasable and programmable read-only memory). The electrical customization mainly involves a step for initialization of this non-volatile memory and thus of the portable electronic entity. This memory is particularly designed for the storage of this type of data that varies from one electronic entity to the next.
It should be noted that, before this initialization, the portable electronic entity cannot function. It can only be customized. Similarly, before the customization step, the non-volatile memory may be empty or almost empty, meaning that it is not initialized.
The step for initialization of the non-volatile memory is a step during which information specific to the application functions of the portable electronic entity and/or specific to each holder of the portable electronic entity is stored in the non-volatile memory. The customization data is generally stored in a rewritable non-volatile memory.
The overall structure of the customization data to be written into this memory is, on the other hand, common to a set of cards of the same type and thus helps to define a customization profile associated with this type of card.
A customization profile is thus a set of data that is associated with a type of card and that defines the general characteristics of the customization of the cards of this type, such as the structure of the data, including, where appropriate, program data, and the common data to be written into the electronic entity on customization, or even physical customization data, for example characters to be embossed or coding of the magnetic strip, or graphic, for example logo to be printed on the surface of the card.
The definition of a customization profile is particularly complex since it needs to coherently observe a set of criteria associated with the structure and the future use of the electronic entity, namely, for example, the standards, GSM (global system for mobile) for example in mobile telephony or EMV (Europay, Mastercard and Visa, registered trademarks) in the banking domain, and the existing applications, for example Visa or Mastercard (registered trademarks), and the internal hardware organization of the electronic entity.
Such a definition is therefore, conventionally, fairly difficult to implement and a risk of error cannot be discounted even when the definition of the profile is carried out by experienced personnel.
In a microcircuit card compliant with the ISO 7816 standard, the microcircuit is generally a secured microcontroller containing in its ROM memory an operating system and/or applications. The image of this read-only memory, that is called “mask”, is generally defined by the card manufacturer in a design stage, and can change over time, notably with an upgrade or a bug fix.
When microcircuit cards are manufactured, the microcontrollers are shipped by the semiconductor manufacturer with a given mask. The operating system of each mask includes a specific coding of the commands.
In the method described in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,889,941, this coding is stored during the customization step in an operating system file.
As for chip cards, they are generally manufactured and customized in batches of cards of one and the same type (for example, in the banking domain, same bank, same card type, etc.). Within each batch, there is just one type of mask.
Thus, in the method described in the U.S. Pat. No. 5,889,941, mentioned hereinabove, only a single operating system file is used for each batch, therefore each microcontroller of the cards of one and the same batch has the same mask. Such is also the method described in the U.S. Pat. No. 6,196,459, which is based on working in batches.
It will be clearly understood that there is a particular interest in being able to customize cards that have different masks within one and the same batch, for example to simplify the microcontroller stock management.
Known from the prior art is a solution that makes it possible to provide a customization of each card with data relating to a person, described in patent EP 0 706 150. However, this solution has the drawback of requiring the writing of an identifier in the card's rewritable memory, which increases costs, because, for this, a customization machine must be used.
In the method described in U.S. Pat. No. 6,196,459, an identifier of the card object is transmitted by a controller to the customization station, then the customization station transmits the identifier to the server.
In the U.S. Pat. No. 6,575,360, a customization system includes a chip card control system and a chip card administration system. The chip card control system provides the interface with the chip card and transmits transparently, that is, without processing other than decoding or encoding, on the one hand, the commands generated by the administration system addressed to the chip card and, on the other hand, the responses to these commands generated by the chip card addressed to the administration system.
According to this patent, the ATR (“answer to reset”) can be part of the application execution request and relates to the communication protocol with which it is possible to communicate with the card (protocol type, frequency, etc.). Furthermore, in this patent, processing batches of cards that are a priori different is not envisaged.
The system described in this patent also presents the drawback of requiring major interchanges between the chip card control system and the chip card administration system. Furthermore, the control system is on standby, that is, performs no processing, between the moment when it supplies a response generated by the card to the administration system and the moment when it receives a new command from the administration system. Consequently, in a system in which several thousands or tens of thousands of cards have to be processed every hour, these interchanges can limit the rate of customization of the cards, in particular when a single administration system is used for communication with several customization stations.
The present invention seeks to remedy these drawbacks and, in particular, to enable the customization of different cards with the same customization system, that is, customization server and station.